So here goes nothing. I would like to present some more basis to start forming theories about what is going on on Rokkenjima. Bear in mind that there is a lot of conjecture but I’ll try and make sure that as much of my theorizing sticks to facts.
To start with, I would like to propose a way of sorting all of the murders. I have mentioned in previous posts that there could be a 19th person who could be pulling more strings than we think. I’ve shown that this 19th person could exist on this third Rokkenjima. We know they could exist on the first and we might have actually seen them on the second (emphasis on might). One of the strongest arguments I think we can make for the existence of a 19th person is the first night in episode 3 as well as Nanjo’s death. This first twilight seems different from other first twilights since we may actually be able to eliminate people from suspicion. It seems like none of the siblings did it and they don’t really have any discernible motive to kill the servants. Nor, for that matter, do the children. Before, when the servants died I had always just assumed that they were collateral damage. They had seen something or just were unlucky enough to be in the way. As far as we can tell, there really was no reason to kill the servants other than that. It’s possible that Shannon might be killed by Eva in order to prevent her marrying George but that kind of seems pretty crazy. Aside from the lack of motive it seems to me that none of the siblings had opportunity to kill all the people of the first twilight. As I mentioned before, Kinzo could have died from natural causes but the others were certainly murdered. Could all of the siblings have collaborated to kill the servants? That seems unlikely since they all seem pretty ready to believe in another person being the murderer of Rosa and Maria. You would think that if they turned up dead and Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie know that Eva and Hideyoshi had taken part in the previous murders and were also absent from them during the time when Rosa and Maria were killed that Krauss, Natsuhi, Rudolf and Kyrie would just naturally assume that Eva and Hideyoshi did it and not trust them at all if not just outright kill them on the spot. Instead, they seem to think that there is another person who killed Rosa and Maria. What I am saying is that I think we can eliminate any of the siblings and their spouses from being the perpetrators of the first twilight. As for the children, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that Maria could have done it. George or Jessica might have been able to. But George wouldn’t have killed Shannon imo and Jessica wouldn’t have killed Kanon. Plus Jessica has that crazy bad asthma so I find it hard to believe that she did it. Battler is the detective so we are eliminating him from suspicion because that’s how detective novels work.
Now we are left with three options for who committed the first twilight: a 19th person, Kinzo and Nanjo. Obviously for Kinzo to be the culprit he would have had to fake his death. Some other corpse with 6 toes was burned and Kinzo killed all of the servants because he’s crazy. Honestly I don’t know why he would do this but I don’t think I can say the same thing about him that I can for the other servants; that he doen’t have any motive for killing them. It may be that they are accomplices in something else and he is tying up loose ends. However this leaves us with the inescapable red truth 6 people: Kinzo, Genji, Shannon, Kanon, Gohda, and Kumasawa are dead! This red truth comes right after the first twilight so while you could try and say that Kinzo could have killed the servants and then died himself you would then have to explain how he got into the furnace in the boiler room. You might try and wiggle around and say that it doesn’t mean literally dead in Kinzo’s case or something to that effect. However it seems to mean that in other people’s cases, so why only in Kinzo’s case is it not true? Basically it seems like Kinzo didn’t do it. If anyone can combat the red truth then I would love to hear how. For the time being though, let us take this red truth as it is.
The next person on our list is Nanjo. Now, Nanjo seems to be a good candidate for the first twilight. Although he lacks motive (as per usual, it seems) he certainly had opportunity. So, while we can’t really say anything about why he might do something like this, he seems to be the most likely of the living people to have actually done the deed (if we ignore a 19th person). However, this brings us to Nanjo’s death and the question of who killed Nanjo. We could argue that one of the people who seemed to be dead was not actually dead and later came to kill Nanjo but, again, we must ask who and why. If we ignore a 19th person then someone pretended to be dead, eventually got up, killed Nanjo for some reason, didn’t kill Jessica and then killed themselves (or somehow or other died) so that all of the red truth could be true? Possible but very inelegant and it feels kind of contrived. The most likely idea in this vein that I could think of is that George is faking death after guessing that Nanjo committed the first twilight. If this was the case then Nanjo would have killed Shannon and so George would have a motive. He may have killed Nanjo, imitated Kanon for Jessica’s sake and brought her away from the servant’s room. After he did that he killed himself so that he could ‘join Shannon in death’ or something like that. In other words, George’s death was a trap so that he could kill Nanjo in revenge. This seems pretty plausible to me and provides a motive for Nanjo’s death. Nanjo’s motives for committing the first twilight are very unclear but, if we believe what Nanjo says in that scene about his sick grandchild I could possibly see some Mr Freeze stuff going on where Nanjo commits crimes to try and save his terminally ill grandchild.
Now, let me propose my theory. I believe that there are certain deaths that hold particular significance to the overall narrative of Rokkenjima. Let us assume that there are two categories for murders: motivated or ‘central’ murders and ‘cover’ murders. This theory assumes that there are certain people that are killed because of some underlying backstory to Umineko. In other words, the stuff that is going on in the background is the cause for those murders. It may be that there is a 19th person who kills these people or it may be that a 19th person prompts their murder. It may even be that there is no 19th person but one of the 18 has a reason to kill these certain people each time. In these cases they die every time because the backstory is the same every time. These are the motivated murders or central murders. They are the important ones that we should focus on and tell us about what is going on in the background and what happened in the past. So, what are the ‘cover’ murders. These are the noise in the machine. They obscure our data collecting by giving us a whole bunch more murders to worry about. If there is a 19th person who is performing the central, motivated murders then these cover murders could be collateral damage (i.e. witnesses or people who might be able to know who the murderer is when they see who was murdered), people murdered by another person (for instance if Eva is not the central murderer then any murders committed by her are cover murders or are only central murders by accident if she happens to kill someone whom the central murderer would have killed anyway), or people who were merely killed to throw the detective off the scent. Why go to such elaborate lengths for this theory? Because of Nanjo’s death.
There are certain characters that die in every episode. Now, we would expect this. After all there are at least 18 people on the island, right? If only 5 at most can survive every episode and we’ve only had 3 episodes there would expect there to be some overlap. However, if we think in terms of central murders and cover murders then the people who die every time become a lot more interesting. But how are we to tell which ones are the central ones and which are the cover ones? Well the first step is as mentioned above; they die in every episode. This gives us a good starting place. What else? Doesn’t it seem strange that in every episode so far there is at least one series of murders wherein there is a witness? In Episode 1 there were the last three twilights where Maria was in the room with them while they were being killed. In Episode 2 there was the scene with Kanon in the servants’ room where Nanjo and Kumasawa were killed. In this episode there is Nanjo’s death where Jessica is a witness. Why do I bring this up? These murders go against what we might normally think for a murderer to do. You don’t leave witnesses. There is no benefit to it. Why do it? One reason might be that this particular person only is interested in certain deaths. Only certain people must die and killing other people wouldn’t be what they want. Notice anything about the victims of these particular murders? Yup, our very own Nanjo seems to be a recurring victim. Could it be that Nanjo is one of these central murders? I think this is very likely. If we think that Nanjo might be one then who else? Kumasawa and Genji come to mind. Both die in episode 1 and while Genji doesn’t die in episode 2 it would be reasonable to say that Genji was able to fend off the murderer this time around while he wasn’t able to in episode 1.
Now I know this is largely speculation and I haven’t exactly given a great reason to believe that there are these central murders or cover murders. However, I will leave it here for now, since this post has already gone on too long. If I think of some added detail that might shed some more light on this theory I will post some more.